WARREN ELLIS is a graphic novelist and author of the NYT best-selling novel GUN MACHINE. His graphic novel GLOBAL FREQUENCY is being developed for television by Jerry Bruckheimer and FOX. He is the writer of the graphic novel RED, adapted into the film starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren. His next book is NORMAL from FSG.

This comic seems to be making the point that comics have evolved past the stage of the hero fighting the gang boss and the criminal threat on a city level and has moved up to fighting conspiricy and government (sometimes even being part of the conspiricy.) But I ask you now… is this a good thing? Is it showing that the genre has moved on dramaticly, or is it rather a cop out, merging comics in with something else entirely to disguise a lack of creativity in modern artists?

I mean we see it a lot, take Sonic the Hedgehog. He is a furry, blue, superfast Hedgehog which for many of his games was content fighting strange monsters which make little sense in order to destroy an evil doctor. However has time has gone on, he has got more realistic… wielding guns, walking around 3D environments and talking just like a human. Where will this end… Sonic meerly a man wandering round a post apocalyptic landscape, wearing blue and being followed by an Arseface style Mutant child called “Tails” for obvious reasons?

I’d say that we are trying too hard for realism and in this quest for it, we have forgotten that to be creative… it didn’t need to be realistic.

Black Summer was one of my favorites of 2008. What a ride! The art was sick! “Ryp”ed me in two…sorry. Bad pun.
I’ve lent it out twice. Been lucky ’nuff to get it back whole as well.
Between Black Summer and No Hero, this is a really good examination of the “superhero” story.
Black Summer to me was as the Bard Spake in Henry V, “lend the eye a terrible aspect, let it pry through the portage of the head like a brass cannon, let the brow o’erwhelm…”
I mean wow. My mind was “walking” funny after that.